Militarism

Chevron Corporation will pay $30 million to settle a fraud lawsuit stemming from its role in the Iraq oil-for-food scandal. The U.S. attorney's office had alleged that Chevron paid bribes and kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's regime in exchange for oil it purchased through the program.

The Pentagon appears to have been overpaying (by hundreds of millions of dollars,) for the food it serves to U.S. forces overseas. The leading characters in this story are Sara Lee, Perdue Chicken, ConAgra, a multi-billion dollar Kuwaiti firm called Public Warehousing, and a handful of shady figures who seem to spend their careers alternating between the military and food suppliers.

Since early 2000s, the situation in Sudan, where some people have estimated that over 200,000 people have been killed, has gained increasing attention around the world. A new strategy has emerged in the U.S. to attempt to force the repressive Sudanese government to stop the violence. Divestment, a strategy used in the 1980s in opposition to the South African government’s apartheid policy, has been revived and is quickly spreading. Intended to withdraw funds and money from the country, supporters of divestment hope it will force the Sudanese government to stop using money for its military regime.

In the summer of 2003, Colombian trade union SinalTrainal called for an international boycott of Coca-Cola products. They alleged that paramilitaries working on behalf of local-owned Coke bottlers intimidated, kidnapped, and even murdered workers at some of Coke’s bottling plants in order to drive down wages in Colombia. Protests against Coke continue in Columbia, the United States, Canada, India, and throughout Europe.